Iridium flare and laser?

[RJN]

Last night the MK CONCAM3 took this image:


I am pretty sure that the line on the left is a laser, likely out of a Keck dome, as a similar line appears on other images that night. But the bright line across the bottom is currently a mystery. My best guess is that it is a really bright Iridium flare. Evidence is the brightness structure of the trail and that it appears to cut off abruptly. A meteor would fade away more gradually and not be cut off abruptly by a frame start or stop.

Any other ideas?

- rjn

[lior]

The pattern is similar to previous Iridium flares captured by NSL, but this one is much much larger than any Iridium flare ever seen.

Theoretically, it might be a glint from an airplane. What I mean is that the airplane has some flashing light that happened to flash for few seconds exactly at the center of the trail. The right edge of the glint is very sharp, just like the end of an airplane trail. There is also another trial at the upper part of the image which looks like an airplane trial.

[redxeth]

After some searching on Heaven's Above, found it!

The lower streak is caused by the Hubble Space Telescope!

See here: http://www.heavens-above.com/PassDetail ... 6178454973

(Sorry, the image won't post)

Everyone should use this website when trying to find out what objects might be in an image.

I just hand-modified the following URL:
http://www.heavens-above.com/allsats.as ... g=4.5&AM=T

Maybe the admins of NSL could add a version of this link to each image captured as a way to check for UFOs (not in the alien sense).

Regards,

Dan

[RJN]

Thanks, Dan. Good find! HST it is. We are aware of the useful heavens-above.com site but I didn't know you could create an all-sky map at any time and from any location. Cool!
- RJN